


Going the distance

by anamia



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Cars, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Reckless Behavior, as written by someone who knows nothing about cars, do not do this at home if you do not have superpowers, of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 00:19:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10797792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamia/pseuds/anamia
Summary: They don't talk much. Or, rather, they do, but it's about music and the car, about passing tools over and propping up one side of the truck to get underneath and where to go in order to scavenge the best replacement parts. They argue about old cartoons and almost get into a fist fight about which Disney Princess is the best one. Sometimes Jason's dad wanders out and gives them tips, or points out all the things they're doing wrong, or just leans against the door and watches them, an unreadable expression on his face.Jason and Zack fix up Jason's old truck





	Going the distance

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this for _way too long_. It was supposed to be an easy stream of consciousness fic, in the same vein of 'And I could be enough' but it turns out that, actually, this is a way trickier dynamic to nail and Jason is a way more complicated character to get a handle on than Trini was, at least for me. The end result is not at all what I set out to write, but hopefully it works anyway.

_The junkyard only offered me $300_ , his dad had said, not quite meeting his eyes, unsure how to even approach him anymore. It's a look Jason's gotten very familiar with, ever since the initial fury died down. It's that look that says, 'why did you do this?' and 'why can't you ever think things through?' and 'don't you know how much this is hurting me?' It's a look Jason hates more every time he sees it. But he swallows down his anger and walks away without a word and tells himself that there are more important things to worry about right now. Things like Rita and leading the team and figuring out how to morph. Things that make his personal problems seem small, so small they shouldn't even be problems. So he pushes them aside and he doesn't talk to his dad and he throws everything he's got into this ranger thing, because Zordon says it's important and Zordon might be an arrogant son of a bitch half the time but there's fear in his voice when he talks about Rita and grief whenever he mentions his old team and that's enough for Jason.

Only then it's over. They fight and they lose and they get a second shot (and then a third) and finally, _finally_ they manage to scrape out a victory. It feels awesome, sitting there in their giant robot as the entire town cheers at their feet, and it feels awesome to go back to Zordon and tell him that they did it, they saved the world. It feels much less awesome to shift back into street clothes and fish his phone from his pocket and hear his dad's message. It feels much less awesome to try and slip through the back door without being noticed and find himself greeted by both parents, worried and relieved and angry all at once, to be swept up in a hug while listening to a lecture about _answering your phone in a crisis, Jason, I thought you might be dead, do you know how worried we were_ ? It _definitely_ feels less awesome to have to awkwardly lie to people who care about you and come up with lame excuses for where he was during the whole thing. He escapes to his room as quickly as he can and shuts the door and tries not to hear them talking about him through walls that never used to seem so thin.

It takes a week for school to open again, a week that Jason spends away from home as much as possible, fixing the damage that Rita and the rangers caused and checking up on everyone he knows and trying to dodge questions about where he was and whether he got a good look at the guys who saved the city with their giant robot. He finds Kim at his back more often than not, less eager to help rebuild but unwilling to let him out of her sight for long. She makes snarky commentary about the sense of community the whole event has fostered and reminds him darkly that everyone will forget this in a month. Jason's not as pessimistic, but he lets her talk and hopes that she's wrong.

Trini's under house arrest, having refused to talk about where she was during the whole crisis. Her parents beg and yell and scold and eventually throw their hands up in the air and tell her that she's not allowed to leave the house until school starts back up again or she's willing to tell them what she was doing. Somehow, Trini's mom convinced herself that she was using the entire thing as a convenient distraction to go have sex, or maybe do drugs, or possibly both. When Jason sneaks in through Trini's window at night she rolls her eyes and tells him that she can handle it. He trusts her judgment and tells her that if she needs someone to break her out she knows who to call, and lets her be. Trini's still unsure around them, still walking on eggshells like she expects them to fall apart any minute, and he doesn't know what to do other than give her time. He'd ask Zordon for advice, but he's gotten the distinct impression that maybe Zordon isn't that good at dealing with people either.

Billy sticks to him like glue for a couple days, still not over the fact that they brought him back from the dead. He doesn't seem nearly as affected by the part where he died in the first place, which Jason doesn't understand, but then, there's a lot about Billy he doesn't really understand. Billy's pretty good about explaining the big stuff, like how he doesn't get jokes or how he really needs clear instructions, but he just kind of shrugs when you ask him about feelings. So Jason doesn't ask and lets Billy follow him around and gets people to listen to him when he starts talking about which building husks are too unstable to fix and where the fault lines are. Jason hasn't forgot that first night up at the mine, when Billy looked at a face of rock and knew immediately that it was going to come crashing down on them.

Still, by the end of the week he's feeling pent up and frustrated, so used to being ignored or mocked that the attention he used to revel in is now somehow stifling. His dad still looks at him like he's never seen him before, and his stepmom follows his lead, like she always has. He wants to scream at them that nothing's changed, that nothing ever changed, that he's the same person he was before any of this happened, that if they'd just look at him they'd be able to see that. But he can't say any of that, not unless he wants to sit through the consequences, and so instead he leaves, leaves his house and his town and heads up to the one place he's ever felt truly himself.

He finds Zack on the cliff overlooking the entrance to Zordon's ship.

“Thought you might show up,” Zack says, seeming completely unsurprised to see him. He kicks his leg against the sheer rock face, sending a couple pebbles tumbling down into the water below.

“Yeah?” Jason asks. He doesn't sit down, not sure if he's going to stay. He'd meant to dive down and at least go into the antechamber before the ship, maybe put on his armor, look at his reflection in the water and try to see in it what everyone else seems to see when they look at him. But he can't just abandon Zack, when he hasn't seen him in a week and Zack seems to have been waiting for him.

“Sure,” Zack says. “Thought you'd be back sooner, honestly.”

“I had to make sure everything was okay in Angel Grove,” Jason says. He kicks a stone of his own down into the ravine and it seems to fall for a long time before finally hitting the surface with an audible _plunk_ and sending waves rippling away from the impact. Jason wonders what he sounds like when he hits the water and how long the ripples marking his passing stay visible.

“Your dad okay?” Zack asks.

“Back to his old self,” Jason says. “How's your mom?”

“Telling me all about the saviors of Angel Grove,” Zack says with a laugh.

Jason laughs too, and they fall into silence. Jason shifts his weight, not sure what to do next. He still doesn't quite know where he stands with Zack, not the way he does with Billy or the girls. For all that he bared his secrets for them all to hear, unprompted and without expecting reciprocation, Zack's still kind of a mystery. Reckless, impulsive, terrible with authority, fiercely protective, surprisingly vulnerable when you're least expecting in. It's an intriguing combination, and a frustrating one. Jason doesn't know how to even start.

Zack lets the silence stretch for a while, lost in his own thoughts. Jason stays standing and wishes he had a tree to lean against. Finally, Zack leans back onto his forearms and looks up at him, eyes half closed. “So,” he says. “What's next?”

Jason considers this, shrugs a little, and says, on a whim more than anything, “You know anything about cars?”

* * *

 Zack does not, it turns out, know anything about cars. Neither does Jason, really, and the first time they look at what used to be his truck Zack whistles softly. “They weren't kidding, when they said it was an event.”

Jason makes a face. “It was stupid,” he says. He can't even remember why he'd thought it was a good idea, just that it had seemed like one at the time.

“Yeah,” Zack agrees, but he looks almost impressed. “I wish I'd thought of it.”

This makes Jason laugh, though it probably shouldn't. “You're crazy,” he says.

“You already knew that,” Zack says. He runs a hand along the truck's warped frame, fingers dragging across the unsalvageable paint job. Jason laughs some more, and something in him loosens, just a little bit.

* * *

They meet in Jason's garage every few days, even after school starts back up. Jason pulls up youtube tutorials on his phone and Zack enthusiastically rips out damaged panels and and lays them on the ground and they both argue about what music to play. Jason likes dubstep, loud and rhythmic and all building to an explosive climax. Zack's a classic rock guy, as he explains repeatedly. He likes the genuine emotions in the tracks, prefers live recordings to studio albums, and will go on at length about it if asked. Jason quickly learns not to ask.

They don't talk much. Or, rather, they do, but it's about music and the car, about passing tools over and propping up one side of the truck to get underneath and where to go in order to scavenge the best replacement parts. They argue about old cartoons and almost get into a fist fight about which Disney Princess is the best one. Sometimes Jason's dad wanders out and gives them tips, or points out all the things they're doing wrong, or just leans against the door and watches them, an unreadable expression on his face.

By the time the first frost hits they've got the truck dismantled. It's nothing but a frame, propped up on blocks and jacks, discarded bits of metal and plastic sheeting littering the ground around it. Jason's learned words for things he didn't even know existed and he's got a burn scar down one forearm from the time he and Zack both learned that ranger powers don't include fireproofing and that even super healing leaves scars. They're bruised and scraped, and smell faintly of oil no matter how many showers they take. Jason's ruined more shirts than he can count, and Zack gave up after the second one and started working shirtless, saying he couldn't afford to lose too many. They've both become experts at stalling Jason's dad at the door before he can catch one or the other of them doing something humanly impossible.

School marches on. Jason's not on the football team anymore, but he still has classes to take and finals to study for and detention to attend. The afternoons spent in the garage become less frequent, squeezed in between Jason's schoolwork and Zack's responsibilities to his mom. Apparently the colder weather doesn't agree with her, and Zack alternates between spending his time with her and screaming himself hoarse in the mountains. Jason tries to talk about it with him, a couple times, tries to do his duty as team leader and help Zack through his problems. It invariably ends with fighting, usually with punches thrown, and Jason goes back home feeling angry and helpless and utterly, crushingly useless. After a few tries he gives up and lets Trini do whatever it is that Trini does with Zack when it's just the two of them. It seems to work a lot better than what he was trying, and Jason tries to convince himself that he's more glad that Zack is getting help from someone than he is jealous and frustrated that that someone can't be him. He putters around with the car by himself, but it doesn't feel right, so he lets it sit there, a dismantled husk, and waits for spring.

* * *

Jason spends a lot of time with Billy that winter. He still isn't fully comfortable in his house, still doesn't like the looks his dad gives him, still doesn't want to listen to his dad and stepmom anxiously discuss his future when they think he can't hear him. His grades aren't stellar, never have been, and he lost his best ticket out of Angel Grove back in August. Jason doesn't know what he's going to do when he graduates either, if he's being honest with himself, but that doesn't mean he wants to sit there and listen to other people judge him for his poor life choices. If he wanted that, he could just go to Zordon, who at least makes up for it by having given him superpowers.

So he hangs out with Billy, when he can. Billy's been going down to the ship several times a week since shortly after Rita's demise, to talk with Zordon and Alpha5, learning about their technology and jerryrigging rough equivalents out of materials actually found on Earth. As winter deepens that means that he ends up spending a lot of his time either immersed in icy water or still dripping wet. Apparently Zordon's species doesn't feel cold, because the ship isn't heated, and by the time December rolls around Billy's on his third doctor's note requiring sickness, this time a chest cold that's left him housebound and coughing like a chainsmoker. Since apparently ranger powers don't protect against germs, Jason stays away and lets Billy send him an endless string of texts about how much he hates being sick and what he's been working on and what he'd like Jason to ask Zordon if he makes it back to the ship before Billy gets better enough to go himself.

He's sitting in his bedroom, idly playing with his power coin, when he hears a knock. “Yeah?” he calls, not getting up.

The door opens, revealing his dad. Jason sticks his power coin under his pillow and raises his eyebrows. “Did you need something?”

“Can I come in?” his dad asks, sounding awkward. “I'd like to talk to you.”

Warily, Jason says, “Are you going to yell at me?”

To his surprise, his dad shakes his head. He still hasn't stepped into Jason's bedroom.

Not at all sure where this is going – and not at all sure how he feels about it – Jason shrugs. “Sure. What did you want to talk about?”

His dad comes into the room, closing the door behind him and dropping into Jason's desk chair. For a minute he just sits there, looking awkward, not quite making eye contact. Jason crosses his arms, waiting. He has to resist the urge to grab the power coin again, feeling a sudden need both for something to fiddle with and for a reassurance that, whatever his dad is about to say, there is _something_ in his life that's important.

Finally his dad sighs. “Look. I know I was hard on you last fall. You messed up and made all of us look bad.”

Jason raises his eyebrows, wondering why he'd even bothered thinking this would be about anything else. “Gonna tell me anything else I didn't already know?” he asks.

His dad scowls. “Are you going to let me finish?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Jason says. “I can probably recite the speech along with you though, so I don't know how necessary this is.”

“That's not... you're not making this easy Jason. You know your stepmother and I only want the best for you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should have bothered asking what I wanted before deciding what the best for me is,” Jason snaps.

“Are you saying you didn't want to keep playing? Because you sure seemed like you wanted that, before you threw all of it away.”

“You have no idea what I want,” Jason says. He doesn't want to be here, having this conversation yet again, getting confirmation he really doesn't need that he and his dad are never going to see eye to eye about, well, anything. “You never have.”

“Apparently not,” his dad says. He grimaces, shaking his head. “This isn't how I meant for this to go.”

“What, you thought this would be the time I'd agree with you, or give you a nice packaged explanation that you want to hear?” It's an effort to keep from yelling. He reaches out and grabs the first thing his fingers touch, which happens to be an old ballpoint. He grips it hard enough that the plastic splinters in his fist, soaking his fingers in old ink. He barely notices. “Well sorry to break it to you, but I can't do that. I'm never going to be what you want, and it'll be easier for all of us when you finally get that. It's not happening.” He stands, ready to get out of this room by any means necessary, including jumping out the window if he really has to.

“You're wrong,” his dad says, also standing. He holds out his hands, almost pleadingly, but Jason is in no mood to let him try and diffuse the situation. Before he can try and leave, his dad adds, “And so was I. Jason, please, listen to me.”

Not wanting to but unable to help himself, Jason stays where he is.

“You're right, I didn't understand. I still don't. But I wanted you to know, I'm proud of you. You've grown up a lot this year.”

Jason blinks. Almost despite himself, he starts laughing. “You picked a hell of a way to say it,” he says.

His dad sighs, though some of the tension has drained from his frame, now that the words are out in the open. “We never have been able to talk to each other, have we?” he asks.

“Not really,” Jason agrees, still laughing a little.

“Guess we'll have to work on that,” his dad says. When Jason opens his mouth to protest he adds, “Later. I think we've done enough damage for today.”

“I'll say,” Jason agrees, but he finds that some of his anger has faded. He still doesn't want to be here, but the all consuming urge to run has faded a bit. He opens his clenched fists, letting the plastic splinters that used to be a perfectly innocent pen fall to the ground. His dad raises his eyebrows at that but doesn't comment. Instead he makes to leave the room.

“Oh, and one more thing?” he says, hand on the door handle.

“Yeah?” Jason asks, wary once again.

“Try to do something with the car before summer?”

“I'll see what I can do,” Jason says. His dad nods and leaves the room. Jason can hear a muffled thump as he sags against the wall just outside, and the rush of breath as he lets out a long sigh of relief. For a long moment Jason stays where he is, staring at the mostly closed door. Then he shakes his head, decides that he can process what just happened later and, not caring who might see, pulls open his window and jumps out, sticking the landing almost perfectly.

“Hey Siri,” he says, vaulting the low fence easily. “Text Kim, will you?”

By the time he reaches the trail overlooking Zordon's ship Kim is already waiting, phone in one hand and latte in the other. She looks up, takes one look at his expression and drains her coffee in a single gulp. “Parents?” she asks.

“Parents,” he agrees.

“Want to go break some holographic alien faces?”

In answer he turns and dives headfirst into the freezing lake, Kim following a beat later.

* * *

Zack wanders back in late February, showing up randomly at Jason's house one day like nothing had changed. He doesn't hesitate at the door, just steps into the garage, a half smirk on his face like he's daring Jason to say something about it. Jason raises his eyebrows. “About time you showed back up,” he says. “I thought you didn't like me anymore, man.”

Zack shrugs, spreading out his hands in a gesture of entirely insincere innocence. “What can I say,” he says. “Apparently even jerks with terrible taste in music can grow on you.”

Jason's torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch him and wanting to give him a hug and never let go. He chucks a rag at him instead, throwing it harder than the situation probably warrants. Zack snatches it easily out of the air with one hand. “So,” he says, making his way closer to the car's skeleton. “Managed to get anything done without me?”

It takes them a while to get back into the swing of things. They've forgotten how to move around each other, forgotten exactly what they were doing and how they'd been doing it. They bump into each other and step on each other's toes and get in each other's way, all accompanied by an endless back and forth as they argue and take swipes at each other. It should probably be deeply uncomfortable, this vivid reminder of an easy closeness now gone, but it reminds Jason more of how it used to be with the football team, at the beginning of the season, before the first big game of the year, when they're all on edge and on top of one another and tempers are running high. He remembers almost decking his best friend once, before an important game, because his friend said something stupid about Jason's taste in pizza. He's always been better at doing than at talking, and it's almost a relief to find himself back on familiar ground.

He watches Zack as they work, glances over at him when he thinks Zack's not looking or when he needs to get his attention. Zack's lost weight over the winter, and his hair's longer, less perfectly groomed than it used to be, like he didn't care enough to style it. He looks tired, exhausted even, for all that he moves with his usual fervor. The team captain and the red ranger in him come to the same conclusion almost simultaneously, but Zack shakes his head when Jason starts to ask.

“Don't,” he says. “Please.”

It's quiet, stripped of his usual sarcasm and bombast. Jason's only really heard him use that tone of voice once before, when he first told them all about his mom, what feels like a million years ago. He nods. “Okay,” he says. Then, “You gonna stand there all day looking pretty or are you going to hand me that wrench?”

Zack throws the wrench in question, sending it spinning end over end in a perfect arc. Jason catches it neatly in his palm and turns back to the bolt currently resisting even his superstrength.

* * *

Zack keeps coming. Not every day, not even as often as he did in the fall, but he comes. They go on trips to junkyards together, sometimes with Jason's dad tagging along to act as a consultant, sometimes by themselves. Between Jason's allowance money and Zack's haggling skills they pick up most of what they need, lugging it home under the cover of night when fewer people are around to question why two teenagers can carry a truck roof panel by themselves or why Zack's got two tires in each hand and is still managing a light jog. They tell Jason's dad that they've got a friend with a van, which isn't entirely untrue, just not quite current information.

Slowly the truck comes together. They learn to work together again, unconsciously moving around each other, handing over tools before they can be requested, throwing and catching various tools and car parts without pausing in their conversations. Jason's dad still comes out to watch them sometimes, watching silently as his son and his son's best friend work together like a well oiled partnership. What he thinks of it Jason doesn't know and, not wanting to break the fragile truce they've managed to forge, he doesn't ask.

Jason's stepmom starts asking Zack to stay for dinner; after a month of polite excuses Zack starts accepting. He makes small talk with Jason's family, compliments his stepmom on her cooking and, when told that it's usually Jason's dad, compliments him without missing a beat. Jason's little sister is fascinated by him, which he seems to find hilarious, while Jason's stepmom plies him with questions about his interests and his future plans, which he takes with less aplomb. By the second or third time he stays late, Jason's pretty sure he's started making stuff up just to see if she'll notice. She doesn't.

“I didn't know you were so good at parents,” Jason says, one night when he's walking Zack home. He doesn't go the full way back to the trailer park – Zack's twitchy about any of them knowing where he lives, probably worried they'll start climbing through his window like they do everyone else's – but he usually at least walks to the old mine, far enough out of Angel Grove to reassure himself that it's not the only place in the world.

“I'm good at a lot of things,” Zack says. Jason can't see his face but he would be money that Zack's got that smirk on his face.

“Wish I'd known earlier,” he says. “I'd have made you come by a lot sooner. Do you know how many times they asked if they'd done something to offend you? 'We just want to make sure we haven't accidentally insulted him,' they said. 'You know, because of cultural differences.' If I'd known you were that good at smoothing stuff over I'd have let you do the explaining.”

“I was born in Los Angeles,” Zack points out, no little dryly.

“Try telling my stepmom that sometime,” Jason says. “It might do her some good.”

“You tell her,” Zack says. “She's your mom.”

“No she's not,” Jason says automatically, and then regrets it. “I mean, she is, but she's also not, you know?”

Zack doesn't answer. Instead he says, “I don't feel like working on the car tomorrow. Want to go beat up some alien monsters?”

Jason raises his eyebrows. “Armor or not?” he wants to know, though the answer doesn't really matter.

“Depends,” Zack says. “You more interested in beating their asses or mine?”

Jason laughs. “I can't have both?” he asks.

“You wish you could have my ass,” Zack responds, and Jason can just _hear_ the shit-eating grin on his face. “Tomorrow at four?”

“Oh, I'll be there,” Jason promises. “I think someone needs reminding of who's in charge around here.”

“That would be Zordon,” Zack says, and Jason reaches out to punch him lightly on the shoulder. Zack's not quite where Jason thought he was, but he gets close enough that Zack swipes back, and then they're running, racing towards the mine and the cliffs it created, leaping over fallen trees and stones as they try to catch each other. By the time Zack splits off to go the rest of the way to his house they're both slightly winded and probably going to have bruises from the times they did manage to land hits. Jason sticks his hands in his pockets and heads back home, the last remnants of the adrenaline-fueled manic grin still on his lips.

* * *

They finally take the car out for a test drive in late April. It doesn't look new, not by a long shot, a combination of their inexperience as mechanics and the parts they were able to scrounge. The paint job's uneven because they ran out of red halfway through and couldn't find more cans of the same shade, and some of the bolts holding the new panels in place stick out obviously, but it runs and it looks like a truck again, and really that's what counts. Jason drives out of Angel Grove, taking the car up and down the twisting mountain roads to test its handling. Zack, leaning back in his seat with one hand sticking out the open window, rolls his eyes at Jason's caution in taking the turns. “You're driving like Billy's mom,” he says. “What happened to the guy who tried to beat a train?”

Jason twists a little to raise his eyebrows at Zack. “You want to drive?” he asks. “Because it sounds like you want to be driving right now.”

Zack straightens, grinning. “Pull over,” he says, and Jason does so.

“Do you even have a driver's license?” Jason wants to know as he and Zack swap seats.

“Not on me,” Zack says, almost daring Jason to object. Jason thinks, briefly, about how much his hard earned good reputation will go out the window if he crashes _again_ and shrugs.

“We get caught, I'm telling the cops that it's your fault,” he says.

Zack doesn't answer, just settles himself in the driver's seat. “Hold onto your ass,” he says, and pushes down on the gas.

Zack takes the mountain roads like someone who's done this hundreds of times, takes corners tightly enough to make even Jason, with his super healing and adrenaline junkie tendencies nervous, coaxes the truck to faster speeds that Jason had honestly thought physically possible for a car that old. He whoops, wishing they'd thought to make the truck a convertible, or at least install a sunroof.

“No wonder you thought you could drive the zords,” he yells, pitching his voice over the roar of wind coming in both open windows.

“That was a mistake and I already apologized,” Zack yells back, and jerks the wheel especially sharply, sending Jason flopping sideways a little.

“You're not sorry though,” Jason says, straightening.

“I was at the time. Does that count?”

“You know what, sure.”

Zack laughs, loud and free, and sends the car careening down a hill. Before them the road turns, running along a cliff. Jason knows this road – it skirts the far edge of the gold mine, marking a hard boundary for how far the miners could expand. A short distance away they can see the other side of the ravine, this same road snaking its way back to the main Interstate.

“Think we can make it?” Zack asks, not slowing in the slightest.

“Not a chance,” Jason says.

“Want to try anyway?”

“If we wreck my car a second time I'm making you do all the work of getting it home,” Jason says, which is not at all the same thing as 'no.' Zack laughs again and urges the car forward even faster.

* * *

(“What were you _thinking_?” Jason's dad wants to know, once the cops have left, satisfied that no one got hurt and that the only property damage was to Jason's truck, which is once again wrecked. Jason's not sure who called them; probably a passing car that thought they were going to die horribly. They got a lecture about being stupid on the road and a three hundred dollar ticket for reckless driving, but he doesn't have to go back to court and his house arrest isn't extended, so on the whole he'll call it a victory.

Jason and Zack glance at each other, neither quite managing even an attempt at looking repentant. “We need better tires?” Jason offers, at the same time as Zack says, “The laws of physics are a cruel mistress?”

Jason's dad looks from one to the other, then over at the car. His face goes through a series of conflicting emotions until finally settling on resigned. Jason expects him to yell, or at least lecture, but instead he only says, “At least no one got hurt this time.” He holds up a hand to forestall Jason's inevitable reaction. “Don't get me wrong, it was stupid and you two are damn lucky to be alive, but all things considered it could be worse. I'll take it. You'll need this though.” As he talks he reaches into his wallet and pulls out a business card, which he holds out to them. Jason takes it and laughs; it's for a local towing company, the same one that had dealt with Billy's mom's van so many months previously.

He turns back to his car, making it clear that they were on their own for getting home. Before he gets in, he pauses and adds, “Oh, and Jason?”

“Yeah?”

“You don't need better tires, you need better suspension. If you're going to be dumb, at least be smart about it.”)

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what movie canon is supposed to be with regards to Jason's family situation, but given the dynamics we saw I'm headcanoning that his dad's on his second marriage. Jason and his stepmom get along fine, but she came into his life later and that's why it's almost entirely his dad dealing with disciplining him. Jason has a hard enough time with authority without bringing any 'you're not my real mom' stuff into it.


End file.
